


Quest to Lothlorien

by orphan_account



Category: AFI
Genre: AOD era, Berkeley, Davey hates hippies, Frat House era, Humor, M/M, drunk Jade, hxc hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2792042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Davey and Jade embark upon a journey to the dirtiest, smelliest most granola-crunchy co-op at Berkeley to retrieve a very important relic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quest to Lothlorien

**Author's Note:**

> Blake recently pointed out to me that whenever I make one of the javeys out of his mind somehow, it's always Davey. They requested I lower Jade's inhibitions for once. Lothlorien is a real co-op, with a real reputation. I don't own them, this never happened, and I don't hate hippies nearly as much as Davey does in this story.

“Why are we going to the hippie party again?” Davey asked, his voice muffled as it emerged from beneath the dramatic drape of his own arm. He was sprawled out shirtless on one of the dirty couches in the pool room of their frat, his tattoos clashing in a revolting manner with the ripped, 70s-green and mustard yellow upholstery. Jade, whose taste was questionable, liked it. 

“Because I they have a guitar I want,” Jade explained for a millionth time since he initially encountered said guitar. This was not information Davey was capable of keeping in his head for some reason, though Jade suspected it might have to do with his complete lack of interest or even basic comprehension of how instruments worked, and how expensive they usually were. 

A few days ago, Jade had met this tall, lanky, smelly, but very friendly guy at People’s Park when he and Adam has been skating stupidly and in circles around the basketball courts in a vain attempt to kill boredom. The guy, whose name was something like Leaf but not Leaf because that would be too much, had been sitting on the grass surrounded by girls with beads in their hair and floor length skirts and shirts made out of bandannas like a scene out of a Woodstock documentary, plucking inexpertly at what Jade recognized as a very nice, very misunderstood electric Les Paul. 

He’d stopped skating, lurking awkwardly at the edge of the courts contemplating how a guy who was visibly stoned and trying to play Bob Dylan covers had come into possession of such a glorious instrument. Its sleek blackness looked very out of place in his hands with the hemp-rings and gardening callouses. The guy needed a big, echoey acoustic with End Nuclear Warfare stickers on it and a flower crown hanging from the capo. 

It occurred to Jade in that moment that he _had_ a big acoustic. It was an well-intentioned gift from a well-intentioned mother of a well-intentioned friend of Jade’s who was currently half-naked and sweaty on the couch, bitching about hippies. Davey’s mom didn’t know any more about guitars than her offspring, so two years ago Jade’s birthday present was a very expensive guitar he couldn’t really do anything but play Bob Dylan covers on. Since Jade was rarely possessed with a desire to play Bob Dylan covers, it was essentially useless. 

A light went off in Jade’s brain. He kicked up his board, and trotted to the circle of young, fragrant vagrants. 

Fifteen minutes later, he had been formally invited to a party at Lothlorien, Berkeley’s dirtiest, smelliest, and most granola-crunchy co-op, so he could possibly trade guitars with a dude who was possibly named after vegetation. On the one hand, he was stoked. On the other hand, he was kind of afraid. Lothlorien was not just a co-op, it was a vegetarian nudist co-op full of vegetarian nudists with names like Leaf. 

Basically, Jade felt like he was going on a quest into a mythical land of unknown dangers, and any guy going on a quest needed a sidekick. Admittedly, there were better people to bring to a vegetarian nudist co-op than Davey Havok. In fact, probably every single one of Jade’s other friends were more qualified for such a quest, seeing as they might be interested in any number of the pleasures offered in a place like Lothlorien. They all liked cheep beer, or free weed, or shrooms, or orgies or whatever. Davey not only disliked all of those things, he _abhorred_ them with the type of self-righteous indignation only straightedge kids who had never experimented with anything at all ever in their entire _lives_ could muster. 

Jade had recently been toying with the idea of edge. It was what happened when the person you spent all your time hanging out with and sharing ideas with and generally loving in every possible incarnation of the word love was really passionate about something. That something, which was a part of that person, stared to feel like a part of you, too. He hadn’t _told_ Davey about it yet, (much like he hadn’t told Davey he generally loved him in every possible incarnation of the word love), and he wasn’t planning on doing so until he was really sure, but he _had_ been noticeably, ardently sober for the last couple of months. 

Regardless, Jade had spent four years at Cal. He had been to co-op parties before; he used to like cheap beer and free weed and shrooms. He never liked orgies, but still. Even though he was increasingly disgusted with the kinds of things students killed their braincells with, he wasn’t a complete stranger to it. He wasn’t compelled by the same furious judgement as Davey was when faced with it. But here he was, desperately trying to convince a guy who hated hippies to infiltrate the hippie death star with him. Attempting to convince the least qualified person he knew to accompany him on a quest he probably didn’t even really need a sidekick for, let alone a hateful and incompetent one. 

Loving Davey made Jade very stupid. He stared at his pale, naked chest with the sweat glistening on his sternum, just below his invisible real-heart, and above his visible not-real one, and then rubbed his face with his hands. “There will be other vegetarians there?” he added lamely, hoping this additional information would galvanize Davey off the couch and on his merry way to Lothlorien, or at least into a shirt so Jade could stop imagine putting his tongue in places which made him feel guilty to think about. 

“Hippie vegetarians are like a different species,” Davey explained authoritatively, as if it were science. “They’ll just piss me off.” 

Jade hopped off of his perch on the edge of the ratty pool table and all its missing balls and collapsed onto the couch, beside Davey’s bent knees. “Dude. Do you know how awkward it will be if I just show up there alone, all, ‘hey, we met at the park when you were hella stoned, can I have that guitar you don’t know how to use?’ I need you,” Jade begged. He liked saying things to Davey like _I need you_ , things he meant on a much deeper level than the context actually called for. It made him feel like a sad character in a tragic romance movie, which made him feel a little more capable of dealing with the reality of being _actually_ sad in real life. 

“You’re using me for my extroversion,” Davey said, raising his eyebrow. Jade could already see the shift in his attitude though. There was a self-satisfied glint in his eye. Davey liked hearing things like _I need you_ as much as Jade liked saying them. Jade was unsure as to why, but he suspected it was most likely because Davey was both insecure and self-obsessed, and hearing he was needed fed both of these drives. 

“And I think you’ll have fun hating everyone,” Jade said. 

“Okay. I’m sold. Lemme get dressed and then we can go,” Davey heaved himself up off the couch, and padded up the stairs in gym shorts and bare feet. It was painful to watch, so Jade put a stained pillow over his eyes until Davey was gone. The pillow smelled like beer. There was still a wrinkle in Jade’s nose over this realization when Davey came back, wearing Jade’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me tank top and more eyeliner than he had been wearing five minutes ago.

 _Yes please,_ Jade thought, hands on his stomach because it felt instantly weird when he had to look at Davey in his own clothes. “Ready for the hippies?” he asked, clearing his throat. 

Davey shoved his keys in his pocket, nodded, and then linked his arm in Jade’s. “Yep. Let’s go get you another one of those things you already have three of.” 

“Uh...” Jade mumbled as his sidekick dragged him to the door. He grabbed the Bob Dylan acoustic on the way out, accidentally clanking its very expensive body against the door frame as he exited the frat. He cringed. Loving Davey made him very stupid. 

\---r32;  
Davey _hated_ hippies. Davey could write a fucking essay on all the reasons why he hated hippies, he could write a goddamn _book_. He had a long, involved and very eloquent thesis explaining why hippies were worthy of hatred, but it was much easier to sum up all that analysis and theory by just holding his nose and making pained expressions at Jade, which he had done at least fifteen times since arriving at Lothlorien. 

Scent was the core of his problems. Hippies _smelled awful_. And it was not just the fact they didn’t wear deodorant. Davey sometimes didn’t wear deodorant, and sure he got kind of ripe when this happened and it wasn’t the best smell in the world but it definitely didn’t require a gas mask or anything. This was because Davey’s sweat was A) fresh B) untainted by formerly ingested alcohol C) only a few hours old, usually D) soon to be washed off. 

On the contrary, hippie sweat was a multi-layered science project cultivated over months’ worth of different sweats all chemically altered by months’ worth of different substances. And on top of that, there was the dirty hair smell. And the dirty feet smell. And, most offensive of all, _towering above_ every other unsavory smell a hippie might have wafting around them, there was the _marijuana smoke_. Davey didn’t understand why no one else embraced the very real truth that marijuana smelled _exactly_ like skunk roadkill. Exactly. This was not up for debate, as far as he was concerned, but for some reason every time he stated this fact, he was met with absurd arguments like, _not all weed, just skunk weed_ , Dave like ‘skunk weed’ was actually a thing. It was infuriating. 

The hippies of Lothlorien were no exceptions to Davey’s vast generalization that all hippies were rank and disgusting. They smelled overwhelmingly like sweat, beer, patchouli, incense, and skunk roadkill. “I should have brought an inhaler,” he complained the second he and Jade entered the dark, smoky co-op via a doorway with a bead curtain and a tie-dyed sheet emblazoned with the word “coexsist” in various religious symbols hanging in it. 

“You don’t have asthma,” Jade whispered. 

“I do now,” Davey replied. He very badly wanted to bury his head in Jade’s hair and suck in the smell of his shampoo and dandruff and Jade-smell. It was Davey’s favorite smell in the universe. He liked it so much he would do horrible, creepy things like inhale from the dent in Jade’s pillow when Jade would get up for snacks or a bathroom break when they watched movies in Davey’s bed. One of the more unfortunate side effects of being in love with his best friend turned bandmate turned room mate was that he was always having to stifle creepy urges like pillow sniffing, and then had to live with the self-loathing that followed wanting to do stuff like that. 

Another unfortunate side effect was following aforementioned best friend turned bandmate turned room mate into situations one otherwise would avoid at all costs. Like burner parties at burner co-ops than smelled like burning plants that smelled like roadkill skunk. 

Lothlorien was very crowded, and very noisy. There were what seemed like hundreds of hippies floating around in clouds, laughing and talking and singing and drinking. There were a bunch hanging out on a couch, passing around an enormous glass bong. 

“So let’s get out of here as soon as possible, right?” Davey asked, pulling Jade’s shirt over his mouth and nose so he could breathe through it. It smelled good, but not as good as the person it belonged to. 

“Yeah. I’m gonna find this Leaf dude and we’re gonna make this trade. Then we’re gone.” 

Davey nodded, relieved. A girl clad in nothing but a huge flannel shirt tottered up to him before he could say anything, her hands outstretched like she was gonna touch his hair. He got a flashback from his mohawk days, when girls were always reaching for his mohawk and boinging it without asking, then giggling and saying how soft it was like they expected it to be knife sharp or something even though it was just hair.

Nothing scared Davey more than girls touching him without his consent, it always threw him into a fit of panic because either they were very pretty and their proximity turned him into an idiot, or they were drunk and he was worried they were going to puke on him because Davey’s inexperience with drunkenness made him unable to discern the difference between a mildly tipsy girl and a ready to black out girl. They all seemed like vomit threats to him. 

This particular girl didn’t seem drunk, though her eyes were very sleepy and bloodshot looking. She had a feather wrap in her hair, and a tattoo of a butterfly on her ankle. Davey stopped dead in his tracks, tightening his grip on Jade’s arm. “Your aura is lavender,” she told him, dipping in close to his ear with smoky breath. 

“Oh,” he said, startled and taken aback. He stared at her hand, which was touching his shoulder. Her nails were painted in chipped rust-red. He remembered he was supposed to be using his extroversion to help Jade acquire a guitar, but the idea seemed strange, abstract, unrelated to the fact that this person was touching him and calling him lavender. He blinked, worked hard to gain his composure so that they could complete their mission and escape back to the rebel base. “Um, what does that mean?” he tried, very politely. 

“Lavenders,” she explained, “Are dreamers, and like...creative free spirits. Creative energy. Are you an artist?” 

“Uh, yeah. I play in a band. I write and sing and stuff.” 

“I knew it!” she grinned, patting his cheek with her palm. His eyes cut abruptly to Jade, looking stricken. Jade seemed as lost as he was, the corner of his mouth turned up into a smile which looked like more of a grimace. “What’s your name?” she asked. 

“Davey,” he answered.

Before he could ask her the same question, she interrupted with, “David. David the beloved. Wonderful, are you his beloved?” she asked, pointing to Jade with a lazy smile on her lips. 

Davey started laughing. It was the only way to deal with being cruelly mistaken for your best friend turned bandmate turned room mate’s boyfriend when you weren’t his boyfriend but would love to inhabit an alternate universe where such a thing was possible. His laughter turned into a choked snort when he saw Jade, who had dropped his big-ass acoustic guitar on the ground with a bang, and was currently bending to pick it up and cover his face in the meantime. Jade was so embarrassing. Davey shook his head. “No, I’m just his friend. He’s my guitarist, actually, he’s looking for this dude who lives here who also plays guitar.” 

“Everyone here plays guitar,” the girl said mysteriously, nodding with her eyes volleying between Davey and Jade in this creepy, knowing way. Once Jade righted himself, still flushed and flustered, she addressed him, “Remember his name? I’m Gem, by the way.” 

“Hi? and uh, no? I mean I don’t think so. He’s tall and had long hair and....is nice. Leaf, maybe?” he winced at the word came out. Davey started laughing again. So did Gem. 

“Lane? Wears a yellow shirt with a salamander on it?” Gem chuckled. 

“Well yeah he was when I--”

“Lane always wears that shirt. Yep he lives here, he’s on a beer run though, he’ll be back soon. You two can just make yourselves at home, chill here until then. Beloved, you could sing for us,” she said, winking slow and lazy while she swayed in place. 

“Uh,” Davey said stupidly, crossing his arms in front of him. “I don’t think I know any Grateful Dead.” 

She cracked up, shaking her head at him. “Okay, Lavender. You’re funny.”

“Hear that? I’m funny,” Davey muttered. 

“Well you,” Gem pointed to Jade’s chest, “don’t need Lane to play us a song. Have a seat. Jam some.” 

“I would actually really love something to drink if you have anything. Like, water,” Jade all but squeaked. Davey suspected he was still recovering from the humiliation of being mistaken as his boyfriend. It was something every one of their friends thought it was funny to joke about because they shared a room and every waking second together, so Jade didn’t really have endless patience for it. Neither did Davey but he felt obligated to smack on a smile and laugh about it lest he actually allow the truth to slip through some crack in his composure. 

“Water? Sure. We also have liqour and soda and home-brewed kombucha,” Gem offered, smiling distantly. 

“We don’t drink,” Davey said, trying not to snap. 

“Mmmmm okay. You should still really try the kombucha, we have scobys for sale if you like it. You can take one home and brew your own.” 

“I’m sorry, cumboowhat?” Davey asked, narrowing his eyes. “Is this some type of hippie booze? Because when I said we don’t drink I meant like we actually don’t drink, not ‘we don’t get drunk,’ okay?” 

“Kombucha,” she repeated slowly, like he was stupid. “It’s fremented, but it’s not alcoholic. It’s a probiotic tea. It’s extremely beneficial for digestion health. And it’s delicious. June!” she called across the crowded, stinky living room to short girl in a white summer dress in the kitchen. “Can you set these two sweethearts up with some of our kombucha? They might want a scoby!” Then she winked. 

Davey did not want a scoby. He didn’t even know what a scoby was. It sounded dangerous. But before he could decline, Gem was herding them to the kitchen so June could hand them each a mason jar of what looked like rotten pond water. There were even things floating in it to complete the image. 

“Um, this is the kombucha?” Davey asked suspiciously. He sniffed it, cautious. It smelled like apple cider vinegar and death. He choked a little bit. 

“Yup, home brewed. See, here’s our mother. You can see her little scoby baby forming on top. Isn’t she beautiful?” June pointed lovingly to what looked like giant, half-decomposed body part swimming in a vat of brown, moldy fromalin on the counter. It was ghastly. Davey made a face akin to horror, bending and putting his nose up to the glass to get a better look at this freaky hippie concoction that was apparently not only alive, but capable of having babies. 

“Wow,” he said, impressed. “That’s one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen.” He stood upright, expecting to be met with a similarly horrified and fascinated Jade. Instead, he saw something even more upsetting than the alien baby fungus mother. He saw Jade taking tentative sip of her juice-stuff. 

“Jade! What are you doing?! That shit is clearly evil,” he hissed. He felt June shoot dagger eyes at him. Then she put the jar away hurriedly, obviously not wanting to let someone who called Kombucha evil to adopt one of her precious scobies. 

“It’s kind of interesting,” Jade said, smacking his lips. “It’s like really tangy, bready juice.” 

“That’s fucking _terrible_ ,” Davey snarled, sticking his tongue out at the swirling mysterious chunks at the bottom of Jade’s mason jar. “Drinks should not taste like bread.” 

“Dude, they said it’s not alcoholic. It doesn’t taste alcoholic. Why do you care?” Jade asked, taking another curious sip. 

“Yeah they _said_ but do you trust these people? Anyway, it _smells_ alcoholic to me.” 

“You think salsa smells alcoholic because it has red wine vinegar in it, Dave. You are a bad judge of these things because the last time you tasted alcohol it was on accident and you were thirteen and it was a freaking wine cooler. Plus, I’m not straightedge, so it doesn’t matter, even if it is alcoholic.” He took a more considerable gulp, his face contorting. “Ugh. It’s really weird.” 

“You’re really weird,” Davey mumbled, suddenly feeling very alone at Lothlorien. “If you were expecting any kisses from your beloved, you lost your chance after putting that shit in your mouth,” he said defiantly and somewhat self-abusively. 

Jade looked at him really hard, eyes flashing and mouth a flat line. The absence of words suddenly seemed solid between then, and Davey panicked like a girl was about to touch his hair. 

“Why would you even _say_ that?” Jade asked him. He nervously shifted his hand around the mason jar, and the chunky pond water contents swirled inside like some creepy love potion. 

“I have no idea,” Davey huffed, cheeks suddenly warm. “Let’s just find this Lane dude, okay?” 

Jade nodded, and started ahead through the mess of people like a trail blazer on a mission. He was acting strange. Davey thought it was probably his own fault. He followed through the sea of hippies, holding his nose and marveling at what a bad sidekick he was, how embarrassing Jade was, and how he should probably go home but inevitably wouldn’t. 

\---

“So what does Lothlorien mean? Is it some sort of Victorian mansion or something?” Jade asked. He couldn’t believe he asked it. Words were flying out of his mouth that he had not intended to touch the outside air. He was out of control. 

The two guys in front of him exchanged critical glances. One was a tubby, spectacled, bearded guy who said he liked to play boardgames. Jade imagined boardgames like Pictionary and Clue, but he knew the guy probably meant boardgames with many-sided dies and intricately painted fantasy figurines. Games that Jade had never heard of. The other guy was Lane. Lane cleared his throat, committing to explaining this very complicated thing to this very stupid person because he was a nice guy. Or that was what Jade felt like he was doing, anyway. 

“Lothlorien is Elvish. It’s where Galadriel is from,” he said very matter of factly. 

“Oh. Of course,” Jade responded, too loudly. He had read _Lord of the Rings_ in high school, he should obviously have remembered that. It was only the clearest, most logical thing in the world. _Where the fuck is Davey?”_ He thought desperately for the hundredth time since Davey had disappeared five minutes ago ‘to get some fresh air.’ 

Since Davey’s disappearance, Jade had become increasing anxious. This was in part because it felt weird and scary to be at this party without the comfort of Davey’s presence, no matter how annoyed or judgmental, hovering over his shoulder. However, there was this other thing that had been happening ever since Jade had taken his first fatal sip of kombucha. He was starting to feel _strange._

Jade had somehow managed not only to finish his initial glass of kombutcha, but three consecutive ones following that. He had felt nervous and abandoned and the only thing you can possibly do at a party when you feel nervous and abandoned and you’re an introvert and waiting for some stranger to trade guitars with is drink cup after cup of something so it looks like you’re busy. Jade didn’t even really like the kombutcha. In fact, Jade found the Kombutcha pleasantly disgusting, as best. But Davey left and it was sitting there on the counter with a ladle in it and he had an empty mason jar, so he just kept refilling it until Lane finally, _finally_ showed up. He followed lane into some deeper recesses of Lothlorien, and then that’s when the strangeness begun to sink in. 

First, his cheeks had gotten impossibly hot. He didn’t even notice it right away because he was still recovering from that hippie girl totally being onto him. She was making all sorts of _I can tell you have the hots for your friend_ faces at him the entire time they were talking to her, then she made that fucking _beloved_ comment and his cheeks had been understandably warm ever since. But then they kept getting warmer, even after the initial horror of some random chick at some stupid co-op finding him so transparent she has to call him out on it wore off. He was just _so hot_. He found himself so distracted by the heat he was radiating that he kept pressing the cool glass of the mason jar to his face in vain efforts at bringing his body temperature down. 

Then, the heat was accompanied by a sneaking confusion. Stuff stopped making as much sense as he usually did. For example, a group of girls walked by in bathing suits and he was throughly perplexed by it. He kept thinking, _why are they in bikinis? I don’t understand? Is there a pool? Are they gonna play in the sprinklers? Why? How?_ like it actually mattered. Then the fact that Lane showed up was confusing in and of itself. _He wasn’t here, and now he is? And I was waiting for this, but why? I still have to convince him to trade guitars? This is hard, socializing is hard. What am I going to do? Where is Davey?_

Lastly, Jade ceased having control over his speech. He would think things, just like he usually did, but instead of the thoughts remaining in his head, they would suddenly fall out of his mouth. It reminded him of being doped up on laughing gas at the dentist, and desperately trying not to drool but dripping like a faucet anyway. Except instead of spit, it was stupid things Jade was thinking. 

When Davey returned, appearing like a very disgruntled apparition from the smoky depths of whoever’s bedroom they were in, Jade wanted to cry with relief. _You were right, the kombutcha was evil_ , Jade thought, but then he realized he was actually saying it, followed by, “I think I’ve been poisoned!” at Davey in this frantic voice that sounded way too young to be his own. He was rapidly deteriorating. 

Davey raised an eyebrow at him. “What?” 

“Is this what it’s like to be an extrovert?” he blurted, already moving onto the next drool-stream of uncontrollable thoughts manifested mortifyingly as words. 

Davey’s visible annoyance dissolved into wary concern. “Are you...okay?” He put a hand on Jade’s shoulder to steady himself as some hippie knocked into him from behind. Jade wrenched himself away from Davey’s touch, not really trusting himself not to do something stupid since he was poisoned and had no self control. Davey almost fell down, and the visible annoyance returned. 

“I don’t know. I feel mega-weird, dude, like, my face is a million degrees and it’s like I’m at the dentist,” Jade said. He could feel tubby beardo and Lane looking at him; he could sense their amused judgement. Davey was staring, eyes very dark and narrowed and searching. Jade gulped then turned away, trying not to think about how badly he would like to kiss Davey, seeing as his thoughts might spew out of his mouth and then Davey would _know_ how badly he would like to kiss him. “I have to clear all my thoughts,” he said to the ground. 

The realization crashed over Davey tangibly, changing the air around both of them. Davey grabbed both Jade’s shoulders and shook him. “ _Are you drunk?!_ ” he hissed frantically through his teeth. 

Jade rolled his eyes, offended Davey would even think such a thing. “Uh, _no_. Duh. I haven’t drank anything, I only had--”

“ _This freaking huge mason jar of hippie booze_!” Davey shouted, holding up Jade’s empty cup, which was a pretty reasonably sized mason jar indeed. It probably had applesauce in it before it was repurposed as a cup. Applesauce or marinara sauce. It was definitely not a jelly jar. 

“That was definitely not a jelly jar,” Jade told Davey. He knew it was unhelpful information, but he couldn’t help it. “I’ve also had three more than one. Four. I’ve had four. 

“Four, Jade? _Four?!_ ,” Davey shrieked. He threw his hands in the air, then poked Jade in the chest with his index finger. “Yep. You’re drunk on evil living fungus tea. I can’t believe it.” He complained, shaking Jade some more. “You are such a jerk.” 

“What? I’m the jerk? You’re the one who left for five minutes while I was poisoned!” Jade all but yelled. It was really loud, and the volume alarmed him, meaning he alarmed himself. _Get a hold of yourself Jade_. He thought. “Get a hole on yourself, Jade,” he said. 

“Kombucha isn’t alcoholic, friend,” Lane butted in, reaching across their weird hippie circle where the two guitars in question were lying side by side like poker chips. He tapped Davey on the shoulder. “It’s just tea.” 

“I am _not_ your friend,” Davey snapped, whacking Lane’s hand off of him. 

Lane held his hands up in surrender, the salamander on his yellow shirt as baleful and non-judgmental as ever. “We’re all friends here at Lothlorien.” 

“Sorry, sorry,” Davey said, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean to offend you or anything, like that’s cool of you think everyone is your friend, whatever, but that tea stuff is _definitely alcoholic_ can you tell how drunk he is?” Davey asked desperately, while Jade rolled around on the floor like a dead fish. “Are you seeing this?” 

Lane cocked his head. “And he’s not tripping on anything else?” 

“ _No_ ,” Davey said firmly, “He is not _tripping_ on anything else.”r32;  
“That shirt is so _unfair_ ,” Jade piped up, pointing to Davey. He couldn’t believe he had said that, so he resumed hiding his face in the carpet and attempting to wipe his brain clear of all thought. 

“This shirt? You don’t want me to wear your clothes?” Davey snapped, peeling Jade off the ground with some difficulty. 

Much to Jade’s dismay, he answered very honestly. “ _No._ I love it. Never stop.” 

“Oh my god,” Davey exclaimed, dropping Jade back to the floor. Lane was staring at them with mild concern, which was actually a significant amount of concern for a hippie. 

“Hold on, friends. I’m gonna go investigate the ‘butcha situation, and check out our little momma.” Lane rose up on legs in linen pants and trotted out of the room on leather sandals. He looked like a biblical prophet or something. 

“He looks like the bible,” Jade told Davey. 

“Shut the fuck up before I punch your vocal cords so hard they cease being functional,” Davey snarled. He sounded mad but mostly his eyes were kind of scared, because he was bad at everything related to drunkenness due to a complete lack of experience in said department. “You are _so, so_ lucky I love you.” The black in his eyes got bigger, more scared. 

The words crowded out everything else in Jade’s mind, repeating over and over again. _so lucky I love you. so lucky I love you. I love you. I love you._ “Don’t you dare even joke about that, Dave,” Jade slurred, shutting his eyes tight so he didn’t have to look at the perfect angle of Davey’s chin anymore. 

“Right,” Davey said. “Fuck.” 

Lane returned and saved them from themselves. “Good news, friends. So he was not poisoned or roofied or anything. Seems the batch of ‘butcha miss June hooked you up with had been fermenting too long, and turned into--”

“ _Hippie booze!_ Thank fucking _Minor Threat_ I didn’t drink that shit, I would have _burnt Lothlorien to the ground_ ,” Davey yelled as Lane. “You live only because I have a very sensitive nose.” 

Lane laughed, and patted Davey on the shoulder. “You are quite a poet, my friend.” 

Jade stared at them from the ground, distantly aware somehow that someone was being mocked, and it wasn’t him, and that was kind of a relief. He stared at Davey’s throat and blinked slowly, wondering how on earth someone so mean and entitled and beautiful and brilliant existed in the real world. He reached up with slow, stupid fingers and touched Davey’s adam’s apple. Davey smacked his hand away, and glared down at him. Jade tried to return the glare but instead it came out a dopey smile. “Oops,” he said. 

Davey rolled his eyes, then averted them. “Yes. a Poet. Exactly. Look, Lane, do you think as a reparation for my getting my friend shit faced on your grotesque pond water tea you could trade your black guitar for his brown guitar? It would really mean a lot to him.” 

Lane’s face contorted into an expression of very laid back gratitude. “Of course, friend. This is one beauty of an instrument. I prefer the acoustics anyway, the Les Paul was a gift. Thank you.” He slapped Davey on the shoulder again. Then, he patted Jade gently on the head like he were a child or a small animal or something delicate. “And thank _you_.” 

“You’re welcome,” Jade managed clumsily. “You can put stickers all over it.” 

“Likewise,” Lane said, amused. He picked up his new guitar, and started picking out a Bob Dylan song. The girls came flocking like butterflies, all fluttery and glittering. 

“There. You got what you came for. Now let’s go get you sobered the fuck up so I can properly yell at you,” Davey grumbled, heaving a very uncoordinated Jade up onto his shoulder, holding the new guitar by the neck with his other hand. 

Jade tried to be helpful. He really tried to properly support his weight, he really tried to not allow himself to get even drunker off the proximity of Davey’s skin, Davey’s skin hiding under the fabric of his own shirt. But trying was hard. He turned his head even though he knew he shouldn’t, he pressed his face into Davey’s neck and kissed him there, tasting the salt of Davey’s sweat on his lips. It felt impossibly good, so he did it again to make sure it was, indeed possible. 

Davey dropped the guitar on the floor, where it didn’t break but easily could have. “What are you _doing?_ ” He asked, horrified. Jade was horrified, too. He was kissing Davey’s neck at a party, in the middle of a vegetarian nudist co-op named after something from Middle Earth. It was abominable. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. putting his hand over his mouth to stop himself from doing it again. “I need to get home like asap.” 

“Uh _yeah_ , let’s get walking. I can’t even...” Davey’s eyes were still saucer wide, his own hand slapped down defensively across the place formerly occupied by Jade’s mouth. “I’m really glad you don’t drink anymore,” he said then, in a voice that confused Jade. It was quiet, vulnerable. “You break my heart enough as it is.” 

Jade didn’t know what that meant, but he pondered all possible meanings as Davey dragged him the remaining blocks home, Lothlorien looming behind them. 

\---

By the time they made it back to Delta Chi, Davey’s left arm was numb and the rest of him was burning in combined fury and muscle strain. As soon as he let himself in the door, he immediately disentangled his tingling limbs from Jade’s weight, dropped Jade on the floor, and chucked the stupid prize guitar on the couch. It slid off the 70’s upholstery onto the stained carpet beneath. 

“Hey! That’s my guitar! Don’t hurt it,” Jade said, reaching for Davey’s ankle futilely. Davey skittered away, totally fed up with the unrelenting mystery of Jade touching him. He kicked Jade’s hand. 

“Yeah, it’s also the reason you’re an idiot and I have to deal with it, so it can live in the pool room for a little while until it stops causing me pain to look at,” he snapped. Fuming, he stomped into the kitchen, which was otherwise know as Toledo, a nickname earned by the numerous, terrifying, industrial cooking machines in there no one knew how to use. They were crusted in years-old-not-vegan food from when the frat actually inhabited the building, and if you squinted it kind of looked like blood on torture devices, so Toledo it was. No one currently living in Delta Chi knew how to cook, so nobody ever really entered Toledo. Davey sidestepped in warily, found the cleanest cup he could, filled it with sink water from the scary industrial torture device sink, and sidestepped back out. 

In his absence, Jade had attempted to scale the stairs to their shared bedroom. It looked as if he made it halfway up, got tired, and stopped for a nap. He was stretched out across like ten steps, head pillowed on his arms, shirt rumpled up around his chest to reveal a strip of flushed, freckled, side-skin. Davey made a face. He hated everything about this. Mostly the guilt-inducing desires said side-skin brought up. 

“Stuck,” Jade said. 

“I hate you,” Davey replied. “I brought you water. Please drink it. Please fucking _chug water_ until you pee out all that pond water.” He trumped up the stairs and handed Jade the cup. 

“This water has fruit flies floating in it,” Jade told him, squinting at the questionable beverage. 

“Yeah, that’s possible. But that cup was preferable to the other ones, which were red plastic and had beer stains in the bottom. I think old rotten beer trumps fruit flies,” Davey explained weakly. It probably made him a very bad vegetarian to think that it was less gross to consume dead gnats than it was to drink from a cup which formerly housed alcohol. 

“Dude, I’m already drunk, a little bit of beer wouldn’t have--”

In a flash of brilliance, Davey dumped the water, fruit flies and all, onto Jade’s exposed flesh. It brought him a great amount of satisfaction to watch Jade flail and yell about it. Jade even made it to his feet and stumbled down the hallways to their room, where he collapsed all damp and defeated onto his air mattress, which sighed. “My mattress sounds as tired as I feel,” Jade announced, too loud. “I could totally use that water now, dude.” Jade struggled clumsily out of his shirt. 

Hot-cheeked and flustered and generally perturbed by the feelings Jade’s naked stomach brought about in his own not-naked stomach, Davey refilled the now fly-free cup before rinsing his own face off with cool water. He could do this. He could go back to their room, yank Jade’s shoes off for him, force a few gallons of fluids down his throat, and then retire to some other part of the house to feel sorry for himself over everything that had happened tonight. His neck was still freaking _tingling_ from Jade’s sloppy drunk person kisses, his hands were still in tremors over it. He needed to put some serious distance between himself and Jade, until the dude sobered up and stopped fucking with his head. 

He was ready to stop thinking about Jade’s unintentional cruelty when he returned, but there were two things which impeded his progress: one was that Jade had taken off all his clothes save for his way too clingy, way too worn-thin boxer briefs. Davey was by no means a stranger to Jade’s body in various states of undress, but because Jade was out of his mind and had forgotten his usually awkward and painfully self-conscious tendencies, he was spread out all over his sheets unabashedly, shamelessly. 

Jade was quite possibly the most shameful person Davey had ever met, so the scene made him feel like he was witnessing something very secret and very dirty he was not supposed to see, even though it was just Jade not caring there was a hole in the inner thigh of his fruit of the looms for once. “Fuck,” Davey whined. 

The other progress impeding factor in the equation was that as soon as Davey sat down next to him, miserably noticing the heat his body was radiating in waves, Jade turned to him and asked, “So, like, what exactly did you mean by ‘you break my heart enough as it is’? Was that some kind of metaphor or something?” 

Davey’s heart sunk. Jade was drunk, so Jade was supposed to not remember stuff. He was not supposed to internalize anything that Davey said. But of course, Davey didn’t understand anything about the nuance of being inebriated, so he just sat quietly with his mouth hanging open, staring down at Jade’s stupidly attractive face with a quizzical eyebrow arched at him uneasily. “Um,” he said. “I was expressing straightedge disappointment in your life choices,” he finished lamely. 

Jade’s forehead furrowed. “Hm. Okay.” 

“Drink this,” Davey insisted, shoving the water on Jade’s face. Jade slurped it down, messily, which was infuriating to Davey because Jade _should not have turned him on when he was drunk._ It should have made Davey disgusted to watch water dribble down Jade’s chin because he was too uncoordinated to drink like a normal person, it _should not have made him want to lick it off_. How the fuck could a slightly drunk girl touching his mohawk send Davey into vomit-fearing panic, but he wanted to lick his friend’s drunk-person drool off his drunk person chin? The world was positively overflowing with injustice. 

With unreasonable violence, Davey refilled the cup and brought it back to Jade, nearly punching the thing back into his hand. “Here. More,” he growled. 

Jade sat up gracelessly and chugged some more water. He kept staring at Davey above the rim of this cup with his frightening intensity, and Davey stared back, bewildered. Then, Jade swallowed, set the empty cup down on the floor (where it toppled over) and swayed dangerously close to Davey’s face as he told him in a low voice entirely too serious for a drunk person, “You don’t even know.” 

Davey’s heart thought he was running a marathon or something. He pushed Jade away, taking it upon himself to ensure that there was no fewer than ten inches between their faces at all times. If the number dropped below ten his chest might actually explode, and Jade was in no state to clean up exploded chest from Davey’s floor. “Dude have you always been such a kissy drunk?” Davey squeaked, scooting backwards on his butt until he fell off Jade’s mattress, because Jade kept on trying to break the unspoken ten inches rule. 

“No,” Jade said darkly. Then, he shook his head, averting his eyes to the wall and visibly pondering the question for a second. “I mean...yes?” 

Sober, Jade was a godawful liar. Drunk, he was a disgrace. “Uhhhh yeah okay, whatever,” Davey told him, panicked and confused. 

Jade flopped back onto the mattress, and pointed accusatorially at Davey. “You are the shittiest sidekick for quests, you just make me into an idiot.” 

Davey, naturally, took affront. “Um, I did not make you into an idiot, the hippies and their hippie booze did, dude.” 

Jade scrambled up again, grabbing Davey’s shoulders to balance himself. “Yeah, yeah. There’s that. But underneath that, I was already fucked up. I, like, can’t be trusted to even think shit around you.” Jade was very, very close. Close enough Davey could smell the impossible goodness of his hair. He was stunned. 

Davey was starting to feel like Jade wasn’t getting dangerously close to his face every five seconds because his bad judgment was extending to spacial awareness, or to unintentionally torture Davey with the promise of almost-but-not kisses, but because he actually _was_ trying to kiss him. 

Davey wasn’t sure why. If he was self-respecting or something, he was probably supposed to deny the advances because Jade was most likely acting from some primal desire to be close to another body, rather than a well-hidden gay crush Davey had somehow not noticed for the last few months he had been actively pining over his unrequited love for Jade. 

But Davey was not self-respecting. He was very, very curious. In spite of the fact Jade had ingested innumerable mason jars worth of dirty fermented evil pond water poison at Lothlorien an hour ago, he really wanted to test his theory that if he stopped pulling away every time Jade’s face got close to his, Jade might actually kiss him on the mouth. He swallowed nervously, and forced himself to hold his ground. “So what don’t I know?” he said softly, tongue darting out to lick his lips. 

Jade leaned in, too close, breath damp and hot on the corner of Davey’s mouth. He stopped an inch short, eyes uncertain and scanning. He shook his head. “How hard it is for me to keep it together around you.” 

Davey was _so mad_. He grabbed Jade by the throat, digging his thumbs into warm, thrumming pulse and asking desperately, “Yeah _what_ , what does that me--”

Jade sealed their mouths, hot and warm and wet as he licked Davey’s lips apart. Since his experiment had proved conclusive, maybe Davey was supposed to shove him off and interrogate the situation now. Instead, he let himself be pushed onto his back, he let his hands rake hungry and clumsy up Jade’s back and under his shirt, through his hair. He let himself kiss back hard, even though up until this moment he had been throughly convinced it was not only unlikely but physically impossible for him to ever kiss a drunk person without spontaneously combusting into a firestorm. 

They broke for air and Jade mouthed searing and sloppy down Davey’s jawline, “I’m so sorry,” he mumbled, like his brain hadn’t caught up with the fact his body was being received with helpless want rather than fury or disgust or any of the other reactions he may have expected from Davey. 

Davey snorted, slid his fingers under the waistband of Jade’s less than functional boxer briefs. “Why are you doing this?” he asked, nose and mouth buried in Jade’s hair and inhaling. It wasn’t exactly what he meant. He meant something closer to _please let this be because for once you don’t have inhibitions_ or _please don’t let it be because you don’t know what you’re doing._

Jade clutched him and laughed weakly, face pressed and kissing into his neck like it had been at Lothlorien, but _more_ , harder, heavier. Davey was shaking. 

“Because I fucking love you, dude,” he said. 

Relief raged through Davey like wind. He stopped caring about the pond water hippie booze, about how sore his arms and shoulders were gonna be from carrying that motherfucking guitar ten blocks down to Channing. He stopped caring that it took Jade getting drunk on fermented _tea_ of all things for him to actually suspect that maybe he wanted to kiss Davey as much as Davey wanted to kiss him. He just stopped caring about all of it, and instead busied himself exclusively with the very important task of rolling around on the floor with Jade making out. It was a much better conclusion for the night than a stupid guitar, anyway. 

\---

Jade woke up feeling like he’d spent the last night on a plane. He was groggy, achey, his head hurt, and his mouth tasted like something had died inside of it. Blinking stupidly and stretching out, Jade came to the distinct and highly uncomfortable realization that the perspective of Davey’s room which was coming into focus before him was not his usual from-the-floor perspective. It was the from-Davey’s-bed perspective. Jade was suddenly very awake. 

He sat up abruptly, clutching Davey’s sheets around him because he also discovered that he was only wearing a very threadbare pair of underwear he should have thrown away forever ago. And Davey couldn’t see him in those.

 _Davey_. Jade’s eyes fell in a panic to the body beside him, a half-naked, sweat-dewy body stirring slowly awake, untwining from Jade’s legs.

It was only then that figments from the night prior began assembling into a somewhat coherent narrative in Jade’s head. Lothlorien. Lavender auras. Mason jar after mason jar of too-fermented kombucha. Davey’s neck, warm under Jade’s lips, which he had already lost control of. His shirt all wet with fly-water while he flopped around on his mattress. Davey staring down at him with a judgement that was tinted with something else. And then, a blur of spit and fingertips and Davey’s tattoos in hyper-close up detail. 

“Oh my god,” Jade said, cradling his head. He tried to get up, but the covers and Davey’s body were too heavy and magnetic. He sunk back down into confusion. 

Davey rolled over, stretching his arms above his head, yawning. His devil-lock was a curly mess, and he tucked it uselessly behind his ear before it sprung back into a defiant modern art sculpture attached to his head. “Morning,” he said. “I can’t believe I actually slept.” 

Then he put his palm, tentative but open, on Jade’s chest. He did not seem disturbed in the slightest by waking up half naked in his bed with Jade. 

Jade stared at Davey’s hand on his skin, burning holes into it. He wanted it to be there, of course. But he also didn’t know what it meant. Jade remembered enough of last night to know for certain he and Davey had definitely spent the better part of the evening doing things strictly platonic friends didn’t do. However, he didn’t remember exactly how it went down. In spite of his verdant hippie-hatred and the huge X he carried around like a cross, Davey was a free spirit of sorts about kissing. 

Jade had never been included in the population of Davey’s friends whom he kissed casually for a number of reasons. But maybe now he was. Maybe he and Davey had somehow worked out some casual make-out thing last night even though up until this moment Jade had been throughly convinced it was not only unlikely but physically impossible for Davey to ever kiss a drunk person without spontaneously combusting into a firestorm. Or maybe Jade had accidentally confessed his definitely not-casual love to Davey last night, and Davey hadn’t freaked out like he had in all the simulations of such a situation Jade had played out in his head. 

Davey yawned again, and then slid his hand easily up Jade’s chest to his neck, where it may have stayed if it had not been too much to endure, and Jade had not smacked it away nervously. Davey’s formerly sleep-bleary eyes became acute, dark, scared, and very awake. “Jade?”

“Did we...did we _fuck_ last night?” Jade asked incredulously because he _had_ to know. The word _fuck_ came out in a hush. 

Davey clutched both his hands to his own chest, eyes wide and frantic and alarmed. “Um, no? I mean you _wanted_ to but I thought...wait. Do you... _not remember last night?_ ” His voice hissed out of him, tongue pursed to the corner of his mouth where it played with his lip ring in a classically freaked-out-Davey manner. Then, the uncertainty in his eyes gave way to hard, clear, indignation “ _I hate alcohol so much,_ ” he nearly yelled, drawing his knees to his chest and hiding his face in them. “and I’m so _stupid_.” 

Jade all but hugged the wall, simultaneously wanting to crawl inside and be as far away as possible from the straightedge tornado that was Davey. “I remember most of it. I remember you got me my guitar, and you basically carried me home. And then I remember, like, doing stuff, but I--”

Davey lifted his head and shot a furious glare in Jade’s direction. It singed, and Jade was a little afraid. “Dude. You said you _loved_ me. You said it like five times. I wouldn’t have let you put your goddamn hands all over me for so long if I knew you were just _saying_ that because some stupid hippies don’t know how long their ugly mushroom has been sitting in a _jar._ ” 

“ _What?_ Dave,” Jade started, heart rabbitting in his chest as he reached out and grabbed Davey’s arm desperately, pulling him back into bed as Davey tried to escape to go try and preserve his dignity or whatever. “I was _not_ just saying that. Like, I can’t believe I said it, but I swear I was telling the truth. I couldn’t lie about something like that, even if I was drunk.” 

Davey examined Jade, face softening a little bit. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” 

Jade made a small noise of disbelief. “Uh, because I thought it would make you feel weird. To be sharing a room with a guy who was in love with you. And like, writing songs and stuff with that guy.” 

“You never thought I might be sharing my room with you and writing songs with you because I was in love with you, too?” Davey said carefully. 

Jade shrugged. “I mean, you never said anything, either.” 

Davey nodded. “Good point.” They sat for a moment, tangled in dirty sheets and touching in some places but mostly just repelled to their opposite sides of the bed by fear and uncertainty. Jade so badly wanted to smooth Davey’s absurd mess of a devil lock with his palm, he so badly wanted to push Davey down onto his back and kiss him blind. Davey was looking at him expectantly, like he _wanted_ him to do those things. He swallowed. 

“Can I. Um. Start over?” he asked. “I’m so not used to the idea that I can touch you.” 

“Me either,” Davey confessed, wavering for a moment before crawling to his hands and knees over Jade, straddling his lap with narrow thighs. Jade could see him shaking until he closed his eyes, Davey’s mouth pressing quick and nervous to the corner of Jade’s. It stopped feeling weird in that instant, and felt a hell of a lot like coming home. He put his hand in Davey’s hair, cupped the back of his skull and kissed him hard and open. In moments, the kiss was wet and filthy, Davey’s legs were spread and grinding beneath Jade’s. 

“So,” Jade whispered when they broke apart, voice fractured with panting. Swallowed, kissed his way up Davey’s cheek bone. Davey was smiling insanely, this bright, horrible smile that Jade never anticipated seeing this close up and surviving. “I’ve been thinking. For awhile. And I think I’m pretty much never going to drink again.” 

“Don’t claim edge if you’re going to break it,” Davey warned, lips at Jade’s temple. “And don’t do it for me.” 

Jade shook his head. “Don’t worry.” He slid his hands up Davey’s ribcage, feeling all the slats and divots and soft spots on him. It felt _so good_ , so insanely fucking good. It felt like being drunk, like being high. It had the same logic erasing effect, but one thousand times better. 

Loving Davey made Jade very stupid.


End file.
